


Knots and Crossed Hearts

by foreverhalffull



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Decorating the office for Christmas, F/M, Post-TB, Robin and Cormoran have Surprises for each other, doesn't go as planned, drunk Robin, happy holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhalffull/pseuds/foreverhalffull
Summary: Robin and Cormoran prepare for their first holiday season as a couple. Each has a surprise for the other, but neitherquitegoes as planned.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33
Collections: Denmark Street Discord Sekrit Santa 2020





	Knots and Crossed Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbeshalftail3469](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbeshalftail3469/gifts).



> For the lovely Hobbes! Nothing could be worthy of your incredible fic-writing prowess, but I hope you enjoy this, nonetheless.   
> (And happy holidays to all, of course. Fingers crossed next year is a bit better.)

“Night, Boss! Night, Strike!” Barclay called, ducking his head into the inner office as he slipped his arms into his winter coat.

“Night, Sam!” Robin replied. Cormoran gave a grunt of acknowledgment but did not move his gaze from his computer screen. 

He’d been highly focused for the past forty-eight hours on appropriately documenting the evidence they’d collected against Footballer’s stalker. Their client planned to go to the police shortly to request a restraining order, and Cormoran wanted to ensure that their data was presented clearly enough to make the case for the Met’s involvement, but not so explicitly that the legality of their surveillance tactics were called into question. As the one, bar Hutchins, with the most professional training on the proper use of evidence in court, Cormoran often took such tasks for himself and approached them with painstaking meticulousness. 

Robin’s belly rumbled, and she spun her desk chair impatiently. She’d packed her work up ten minutes before, having blessedly little to do before a Monday morning meeting to open the case of a waiting list client, but she was planning to spend the evening at Cormoran’s, and it seemed ill-mannered to go up without him.

“Nearly done, Melder.” He didn’t look up as he said the words, able without visual evidence to sense her impatience, but lay his left hand palm up on the desk between them for her to hold.

Robin looked down at her lap, still spinning in her chair, but dizzy now from an internal force rather than the centripetal kind. She and Cormoran had begun dating only three Sundays prior, on the evening of his birthday, when the warmth of a handful of whiskies in his belly had led him to whisper his birthday wish aloud as he blew out his candles. She’d hardly attempted to match his drinking pace, so the warmth in her chest had been provided not by the whisky but by his words, and she had fulfilled his wish immediately.

He had since, seemingly without noticing, begun calling her _Melder_ when thoroughly distracted or recently… er, spent. Robin had discovered the phrase was a Cornish term of endearment and liked to assume, though she wasn’t sure, that it had been a favourite of his aunt and uncle.

Realising Robin had not taken his proffered hand, Cormoran looked up to find her still grinning sillily to herself. 

“What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“That nickname,” she replied quietly, almost in a whisper, as if worried that to bring it out into the world would tarnish the secret, delicate treasure it held for her.

“What nickname?” She felt a cold stab through her stomach at his confused response; how could something that had brought her such a sense of comfort and belonging have not even been noticed by her partner?

“You keep calling me—”

“Melder. It’s Cornish; it’s what my Uncle Ted called Joan. I can—”

“I like it.”

He smiled at her then, in the particular toothy, uneven, nearly dimpled work of art she had only recently seen emerge for the first time. It had shocked her to uncover a new part of him after having come to know him so deeply over the past four and a half years, but the sight of this expression, with its boyish pride and glee, was a private treasure she stored in her heart. It was getting rather full in there lately.

Finally turning his gaze away from her, he closed the lid of his laptop and swiped his keys and cell phone from the surface of the desk.

“Pub for dinner?”

“Pub sounds fab,” Robin replied. “And we deserve a couple extra rounds to celebrate closing out Footballer’s case.”

“That we do.”

Robin’s teeth chattered audibly as they stepped out onto Denmark Street; London had been chillier than usual for the second week of December, though predictably grey and wet.

“I really should make an effort to find my other glove,” she commented, slipping her bare right hand into Cormoran’s left. He lifted it to his lips before pressing their hands and his kiss into the pocket of his greatcoat for warmth and safekeeping.

Cormoran laughed gently, squeezing her hand. “I may have found it yesterday,” he confessed. “But I liked this system we had going, so I didn’t want to give it back.”

“Stellar problem solvers, us.”

“First class.”

“Where was it, though? I swear I looked damn near everywhere.”

“Under my side of the desk.”

“Why on earth—?” Robin blushed as they both remembered her recent escapades underneath his side of the desk, and why the glove had needed to be removed, and why her dizzied, overwhelmed brain had not registered the cold of her fingers until she was nearly home.

Cormoran chuckled and nudged her through the door of the Tottenham, where they ordered their standard beer and wine alongside an order of fish and chips for her, and a steak pie for him. 

After a couple minutes’ satisfied, silent chewing, Robin sighed deeply. “I don’t want to go to Masham for Christmas.”

Cormoran cocked an eyebrow, and she continued. “Mum and I have been getting on better lately, and I’m sure it won’t be _quite_ the baby circus it was last year, with Annabel being a bit older, but it was just so horrific; I left feeling like utter shit about myself. And this year I’m certain Matt and Sarah will be there, parading around their ugly baby.”

At Cormoran’s none-too-quiet snicker, she defended herself. “It _is_ ugly; I’ve seen pictures. It had that conehead issue babies often have going on, but somehow it never subsided. Plus, it has Matthew’s sister’s nose, poor soul.”

“But anyway, no matter how vindicated the child’s ugliness may make me feel, it’s so hard to get into the Christmas spirit knowing _that’s_ what awaits me at the end of the season.”

Cormoran nicked a chip from her plate and dipped it into his pie. “If you don’t want to make the trip up, then don’t bother with it.”

Robin eyed her partner. With their relationship not yet a month old, they hadn’t told anyone about it, though she was quite sure their employees were aware. The secrecy wasn’t born out of a desire to keep things hushed should it not work out; Robin had been confident throughout the months preceding their first kiss that they could — would — last forever if they gave it a go. But it was bliss to uncover new aspects of the other without their network of entirely-too-curious acquaintances peering in. That was, she supposed, the social circle one acquired as a detective. 

Foregoing her family’s festivities to spend the holiday with her partner would necessitate disclosure to her mother. Of course, she could always lie and claim work obligations, but to do so would only further blacklist her lover in her mother’s eyes, when Linda Ellacott had just begun to accept him, complimenting their work and asking after him with less accusation baked into her tone.

“What are you doing, then?” Robin asked.

“Lucy and the kids are with Greg’s family this year. I’ll probably see them before the day to exchange gifts and pretend to like three-fifths of them so that I don’t get yelled at.” 

He chewed for a moment, grinning with his eyes as she recounted, between giggles, his offensive summary of his nephews’ character. 

“And I should see Ted. Want to, actually, though I haven’t proper spent Christmas with them – him — in years. I dunno if he’d want to be in the house with it so empty, though, so I may ask if he wants to come down? Have to get a hotel, I reckon, I don’t think we’d both fit in my flat.”

Robin sipped on the last dregs of her second glass of wine. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“No, no, he’d love to have you. Should’ve introduced you last year, when we met with Anna and Kim to take the Bamborough case.”

Robin reached across the table for his hand and squeezed it. “I’d love to spend Christmas with you, but only if the both of you are comfortable with it. If not, I can run off to have a secret one-person holiday, or I can suck it up and face Masham. There are worse family situations to endure, I know.”

Robin rose to buy their third round of drinks, edging carefully out of the booth and dropping a kiss on Cormoran’s curly-topped head as she passed him. He squeezed her hip briefly in return before releasing her so that she could continue her journey to the bar.

With his heart halfway to Cornwall, Cormoran thought suddenly of his aunt, and how the only thing she’d never told him to feel was more comfortable with her than his mother, and how his five-year-old, and eighteen-year-old, and even thirty-nine-year-old heart would have coped far better if she had done so, and in so doing, relieved him from the feeling of betrayal that any gratitude for her love, warmth, and stable hearth had seemed to ignite against his own mother, even now as he held them both only in his mind.

Seeing Robin making her way back toward him, Strike carefully rearranged his expression into something less melancholy, and cast about for a suitable topic of conversation.

He sipped his Doom Bar in quiet contentment, enjoying the sparkle of Robin’s eyes, which gazed happily into his. She closed them for a moment, leaning back on the wood paneling of the wall behind her and savoring the cool trickle of white wine down the back of her throat.

“If I’d need to get a hotel room for Ted anyway, and you were considering a one-woman secret holiday…” he started out cautiously, but felt his spirits buoyed by the way she jerked forward into an upright position, opening her eyes and grinning without a hint of caution or trepidation about where his plan was leading. 

“We may as well go somewhere all together!” she exclaimed, drunk on a bit more than love.

He smiled. “Right in one, Ellacott.”

“Where were you thinking?”

“I know you said Matt only liked to go to warm places for vacations, so you haven’t seen as much of Europe as you would have liked. So I thought we could get a cabin somewhere, and visit Christmas markets? I saw some beautiful ones when I was stationed in Germany.”

Robin gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth. “Or could we do a river tour? I’ve always wanted to do one of those! And Ted loves boats, right? Or is it only sailing? Do you think he would like it? Would you like it? I would love it!”

He grinned at her enthusiasm. “It’s not just sailboats; I bet he would love it, too. That’s very thoughtful, Robin.”

How different she was than any of the women he’d dated before knowing her, or before allowing himself to love her. She oozed support and enthusiasm and acceptance in a way he’d not thought it possible for a strong and independent person to do, but she toed the line of approachable-yet-indestructible perfectly.

Cormoran tipped his pint glass back to finish off the last drops, and when he’d lowered the glass back down to the tabletop, Robin slid her last chips over toward him.

“Are you ready to head back soon?” he asked. “I’ve got a surprise for you at the office.”

"I've one for you, too. 'S my new lacy green knickers, to replace the ones you ripped on your birthday." 

Cormoran laughed. Tipsy Robin was his favourite… except that actually, all versions of his Robin were his favourite; he could never choose between them! But Tipsy Robin was highly amusing.

“Wow, you really kept your cards close to your chest there mate; that's some top tier secret keeping. You should look into being a detective,” he teased, getting to his feet as they prepared to leave the pub.

"I am looking into a detective!’ she retorted, before quickly amending her response. “Shit, no, that sounds like I'm performing a medical exam. I'm looking... toward —no, at— well, for — a detective. Bugger. No, I've found him. You. Gotcha.”

“Yep, you got me,” he responded, wrapping her scarf around her neck and tugging it ever so gently, so that the ends of it hung evenly on either side of her chest. His response had come out a bit less teasingly, indeed a bit more softly and fondly than he’d intended, but then he didn’t have to hide such things from her now.

She stumbled slightly into his chest, and he hugged her tightly against him, pressing his lips to her hairline.

When they reached the office, he nearly wanted to continue up the stairs to his flat and would in fact later almost regret not doing so, but he’d already told Robin a surprise was in store for her, so he decided to stick with his plan. He set her on the farting sofa and tied her scarf gently around her eyes to preserve some measure of secrecy before digging loudly through their vacuum closet for all of the elements of the surprise: an artificial tree, an angel in a trench coat for the topper, a box full of brightly coloured baubles and candy canes to adorn it, an extra-large spool of Christmas lights, and a tree skirt bearing the gifts from the Twelve Days of Christmas song, which had been on offer.

“You can look now.”

Not a single bone in Strike’s body had ever wanted to have a kid, but the childlike wonder and glee in Robin’s eyes as she regarded her surprise made him _almost_ reconsider, if only it would look and act exactly as she did (that is, perfect in each and every way). But that was too much of a risk, especially when he was already perfectly content with her.

“We’re going to decorate?” She asked eagerly. Her question was punctuated by a hiccup.

“I thought we could dress the place up a bit, as part of my master plan to make a better working team. Still paying reparations for all I put you through over the last year.”

“Is this step thirty-seven?” she asked teasingly.

“Thirty-eight, at least,” he corrected. She saluted him jokingly.

“Can we do it now?!”

Strike laughed. “You don’t want to go to bed, and do it in the morning?”

“No, I’m feeling quite festive now! We’ve finished Footballer, so it was already celebrating time, and now we’ve a plan for the holidays as well, so we can finally get into the spirit of the season.”

“Alright then. Festive time, it is. Should I put the kettle on?”

“Ooh, yes, we could make Irish coffee! That’s what we used to do while we decorated when I lived at home.”

Cormoran smiled at his partner. “We can make that happen. I’ll go up for the liquor and cream, you get the tree pieces out of the box while I’m gone?”

“Sounds good, Boss.”

He laughed, bestowing the nickname back upon her. “Alright, Boss. See you soon.” 

By the time he made his way back down the stairs, a bottle in each hand, she had each of the tree’s three tiers connected to one another and was laying on the floor beside the windows, spreading the branches closest to the floor. 

“You’re fast, Ellacott.”

“At some things,” she retorted. It had taken them bloody ages to get together of course, and she was thorough with jobs that required it. 

“Kettle’s nearly—” It clicked as he spoke, so he turned toward the kitchenette to finish their drinks before joining her at the tree. He perched on one arm of the sofa while she accepted her mug her spot on the floor, adjusting to sit up with her legs crossed.

After only a few sips, she turned to set her mug on the floor, flush against the bottom of the sofa that it was tucked clean out of the way. 

“We’ve got lots of fluffing ahead of us, Mr. Strike. This tree is looking far too holey.”

He rose, taking her comment as the nudge to action it was, and began spreading the higher branches to give the tree a more realistic look.

“Fluff is the most important step,” he noted, though this was truly his first experience assembling an artificial tree. He didn’t tend to decorate for just himself, but he had someone else to consider, now. 

“The most important part of life, fluff is!” Then, Robin giggled, adding, “I sound like Yoda.”

“And you’re just as wise,” Cormoran commented, stepping back to survey the row of branches he’d just completed. “Though not half as green.”

Robin’s laughter shook the tree. “I’ll be green t’m’rrow,” she commented, reaching down to drink more of her spiked coffee.

Strike didn’t doubt it. “You can wear my red quarter-zip jumper, and then you’ll look right festive, being so red and green.”

She laughed again, and the sound—his favourite— was riddled with hiccups. They worked in silence for a while, she making her way upwards from the bottom and he moving down from the top, until at once, their hands met in the middle of the tree.

Robin’s fingers jumped against Cormoran’s in surprise; she hadn’t realized they were so close to being finished with the fluffing. The feel of Cormoran’s large, calloused hands sent a warm jolt through her which was no less electric for its predictability. His hands, more than almost any other part of his body, most shockingly emphasized the size difference between the two of them, as though they were painted with an altogether different brush or by a different artist, with his form bulky and hers delicate. His touch carried force behind it but not in it, strong enough to _move_ her, but delicate enough that were her entire body the size and fragility of a single flower petal, she would not have been crushed.

Robin scratched her fingernails across Strike’s palm to his wrist. He groaned, the sensation instantly bringing to mind the way she’d held his wrists behind his head the night before as she’d smiled and then smirked and then slackened into no expression at all, all from above and atop him, where she fit so perfectly.

Strike wrapped his own rough-hewn fingers around Robin’s hand and wrist in one, with gentleness ill-matched to their size but perfectly befitting of his character, and squeezed briefly before releasing her and in so doing causing her to cease her soft but erotic scratches up his forearm. 

He took a step back from the tree, admiring their handiwork. “Are we ready for lights, Ellacott?”

“You’re the light of my life, Cormoran.” She delivered the near-non-sequitur with absolute deadpan seriousness, looking him in the eyes as she did so.

“Thank you, Robin.”

“You’re very welcome, Cormoran.”

“I meant the tree, though.”

“Oh— oh, the tree is the light of your life?”

“No, Robin, that’s you. And the agency, and everything we’ve built. That’s my life, but I meant we should _light_ the tree. As in, put the string of lights around it.”

“Oh.”

Cormoran laughed under his breath as he grabbed the lights from the sofa, taking a large swig of his coffee before removing the packaging from the lights and returning to Robin and their tree.

She insisted that the lights should be started from the top of the tree and worked downwards in a spiral, but Cormoran was convinced that such an approach would result in the lights failing to reach the plug, leaving them with an unlit tree. As the considerably soberer member of their team, and having not disclosed his lack of experience, Strike won out. 

He plugged the strand of lights into the plug and began to weave them into the lowest portion of the tree, passing them to Robin once his arms could no longer reach, so that she could do the far side of the tree, before passing them back to him. The system worked quite well, and he reckoned he could probably reach halfway up the tree before he’d be forced to abandon his seat on the floor in favour of an awkwardly hunched standing position.

“What are you getting Nick and Ilsa for Christmas?” Robin asked. “Last year I felt like I had a good handle on things Ilsa wanted, but we haven’t had a shopping day in ages. And unless I get a homey joint couple gift that suits the both of them in one, I’m entirely lost for Nick.”

“We could probably just show up at their house holding hands, and Ilsa would be as satisfied as if we’d given them a fortnight-long holiday, all expenses paid.”

Robin laughed. The sound was interrupted by Strike’s cursing.

“Fucking hell, we forgot the tree skirt.”

“The tree skirt? Why d’we gotta put it on now? You can just put it on at the end and snap it together, can’t you? Or is it a Cormoran Strike ritual to do it before the lights?”

“No, I think this one was one piece. We should have slipped it over the base of the tree before we attached the bottom layer.” He passed the lights to Robin, who was standing now as the lights had progressed to the level of her hipbones, and rose with some difficulty to his feet, approaching the collection of decorations he’d purchased. He selected the tree skirt and examined its packaging, humming with discontent as he returned to his partner.

“We should have done it at the start; it has only a small opening. But we can probably do it now, before the tree gets too heavy or has the breakable ornaments attached.” As an afterthought, he added, “And there are no Cormoran Strike Tree Decorating Rituals; this is my first time assembling a tree.”

Robin shook with glee. “A Cormoran Strike first? I didn’t think I’d ever find something — you’ve such experience — oh!”

“You’re my first real love, too.”

Robin flushed from head to toe, and her body hummed. They had not said the words to one another, not so explicitly, anyway, and to hear on top of the fact that he did love her, that he did so more than he’d loved any other, or differently, more truly, more purely — she could not have been expected to stay still under such circumstances.

“You’re my first real love, too, Cormoran. Not that you had tremendous competition.”

Both laughed with little humour as Cormoran returned to the tree and pecked her on the lips, before returning to the ground. “If you can hold the tree, I think I can slip the skirt under and then work it over the base of it.”

Robin nodded, subconsciously sticking her tongue out in concentration. The tree was heavier than she’d anticipated, and she was grateful she’d not attempted to lift it while keeping hold of the lights, as had been her initial plan. After a number of muttered oaths and considerable misdirection, they finally managed to steer the tree into the skirt — according to Robin — or the skirt onto the tree, if one asked Cormoran. 

“Glad we did that before we got any further along in the decorating,” Robin commented as she picked the lights back up and restarted the process of tucking them between the branches, passing to Cormoran, reaching around the tree to grab them back, and repeating.

Little did either of the detectives know, however, that when Robin had set down the lights, she had done so such that upon picking them up, they had wrapped around the backside of her legs and, due to the fact that they’d unwittingly begun stringing the lights in the opposite direction, continued to wrap more thoroughly around the both of them with each pass around the tree. 

Neither of them noticed, in fact, until the strand had reached nearly all the way to Robin’s underarms, so immersed were they in accidental work talk. They never _meant_ to talk shop, exactly, but their no-work-chat-during-partners’-time rule had only lasted for one single measly date night and a half. Detecting was so deeply at the heart of their initial attraction to one another that forced attempts to extricate it from their relationship were as difficult and fundamentally undesirable as removing the potatoes from a Sunday roast. 

It was a shame that they were, on occasion, utterly shit at such detecting in their personal lives, including in their inability to note the rising danger of their holiday decorating.

Robin attempted to step back from the tree to get the ornaments, having surmised that Cormoran could handle the tip on his own. 

As she turned, Robin noticed for the first time that she was tangled up to her breastbone in Christmas lights. Before she could voice this incredibly astute observation, the momentum she’d already expended toward approaching the sofa caused the lights to pull taut against her. Without either of them knowing what had happened, suddenly Robin was toppling toward the ground, turning back as she fell in an unsuccessful bid to warn Cormoran of their impending fall. She was rewarded with his elbow between her eyebrows, bestowing starry vision upon her that was entirely unrelated to the glow of the lights Cormoran had insisted upon plugging in before stringing.

The tree had initially landed halfway between them, but had been somewhat forcibly ejected from that space by the force of Cormoran’s fall onto his partner, leaving the three of them wound impossibly tightly together, and the two sentient beings of the bundle cursing bitterly, both in pain.

“Are you alright, Robin?” Cormoran asked, attempting without great success to pull back enough to see her face and assess the damage he’d inflicted. 

“Had worse,” she said drily. “Got punched last year, had two black eyes for weeks. Looked like a total badass.”

“And the other guy?” Cormoran asked jokingly.

The joke seemed to go completely over Robin’s head; rather than responding with an account of his injuries, she donned a faux-American accent. “Total fucking babe.” Then, dropping the ruse and accent in one go, she continued. “Was a really good night though. Best of my life, bar one. Or two.”

Cormoran smiled. It had been a good night. Unfortunately, laughing at Robin’s joke moments before had caused his body to shake slightly, and the movement had given his stump an uncomfortable twinge. It wasn’t necessarily a sign of significant damage, but more likely meant that his leg had twisted in the socket of his prosthetic, which would render standing an even more impossible task than he feared their entanglement already had. 

In a process punctuated by numerous groans and incomprehensible, muttered commands, the detectives managed to roll so that Cormoran was laying on his left side and Robin, her right, facing one another with Robin sandwiched tightly between her partner and their Christmas tree. They’d been thoroughly unable to free themselves, despite a truly impressive variety of approaches.

“Sorry my surprise was a bust, melder.”

“This was not a bust, Cormoran. _We’re_ the bust.”

He laughed, as she’d intended. “Maybe we could revisit your surprise instead.”

“The knickers? That’s geographically — er, anatomically, spatially — there’s no way you could reach!”

“I can be creative,” Cormoran protested, his voice low and sultry, but Robin declined.

“You would surely not be able to see them, though, which is a waste of the surprise. And besides, I could hardly get into the mood when nine-tenths of my brain is currently devoted to trying to figure out how on earth we can manage to get out of here, or whether we should resign ourselves to starving on the ground until Pat arrives in …” Robin paused to complete her mental calculations, “sixty hours.”

“Sixty hours?”

“Yeah, unless we’re lucky, and Barclay pops in in the middle of the night for some godforsaken reason…”

“I will quite literally die if I cannot eat any biscuits in sixty hours.”

“How will we pee?”

“On each other, probably. But how will I smoke without setting the tree on fire?”

“Rough start to forced quitting? But won’t we need water? The steps for survival in the wilderness… surely you must have learned this in the Army?”

“Shelter is first: check, got that, but you’re right on the water… and we’ve just had alcohol, which is quite dehydrating, so we’re likely worse off than average… I can’t stop thinking about the biscuits, though.”

Robin laughed. Cormoran sighed deeply.

“If only you’d listened when I told you we should have gotten one of those Google speakers for the office. We could have told it to call someone to come save us, and then we wouldn’t have to go a single hour without biscuits.”

“Fuck.”

Robin laughed. “Maybe we could've made it answer to Sandra, to make it feel more personal.”

“Wouldn't work,” Cormoran replied. “I've tried to get an assistant to do that once before.”

Robin laughed. After a moment, he continued. “How can we promise our clients privacy if we have Jeff fucking Bezos listening in every ten bloody minutes?”

“Bezos is Amazon. Google is... well, I don't know.”

“Probably for the best. Less likely to have corporate scandals if you’ve never heard of him. Or her.”

“Better choice to entrust with our clients' personal details, then?” Robin goaded him.

“Not a bloody chance.”

Robin snorted. It was a fair point, and she didn’t expect her cardboard-file-toting partner to change his mind any time soon. Some tasks were better done the old-fashioned way, anyway.

Robin’s phone began ringing then from inside her coat pocket, and the vibrations caused it to fall from where it had been slung haphazardly off the seat of the farting sofa. Cormoran was just able to reach into the pocket by stretching to his full length, and Robin held her breath. Depending on who was on the other end of the line, it could be a great help. Fingers crossed it wasn’t her mother.

Cormoran swiped blindly at the device’s screen. When it stopped ringing, Robin called out a tentative greeting. 

The voices were quiet, given that Cormoran hadn’t managed to switch on the speakerphone setting, but Robin could make out Vanessa’s flat London accent emanating from the floor past Cormoran’s head. She and Wardle had apparently put together some evidence for a case Robin had asked for help with while on a boring patrol nearby, and Vanessa was wondering whether Robin was still in the office, hoping she could deliver the brief before the weekend to save a later trip.

“That would actually be a great help, Van!” Robin called, uncertain as to quite how forcefully she needed to project her voice in order for the phone to register it. “Cormoran and I are in a bit of a predicament, so the sooner you could come, the better!”

Vanessa confirmed that it would be half an hour before the next pair of officers would be on duty to relieve herself and Wardle, but that they’d pop by as soon as they could.

As soon as the line clicked to signify Vanessa had rung off, Cormoran inched himself back down toward Robin and began to kiss her jaw and neck. Her back arched as her skin prickled and tightened with desire, and she ignored the unfamiliar prickle of the artificial tree’s branches at her back as her body writhed against her will.

“Now that you don’t have to worry about starving on the floor with me for the next sixty hours, could I tempt your mind to wander toward your surprise for me?” he asked. The deep timbre of his voice evoked a moan from the depths of Robin’s soul. Encouraged by her enthusiasm, Strike walked his fingers carefully down her abdomen to the waistband of her trousers.

“I don’t think … my mind—” she gulped, “could be tempted away from your surprise… if my life depended on it.” She knew he had needed permission before taking things farther, but Robin found the words difficult to string together in the face of such sudden anticipation. 

Neither of them was surprised by the sheer quantity of liquid desire her body had produced for him, or by the obscene sounds it made when he expertly explored it, and Robin found herself thanking the innumerable stars on the insides of her eyelids for the fact that Cormoran was more talented with one of the three fingers inside her than Matthew had been with every bone in his body. 

When her body had stilled and relaxed enough for him to remove his hand, she eagerly sucked it clean, having concluded that there was no alternative method to make themselves presentable before Vanessa’s arrival. One particularly hard pull on his middle finger caused Strike to grind his hips against Robin’s thigh, seeking release, and both moaned. 

“We’ll never be satisfied, will we?” Robin asked, expressing disappointment that their options for further pleasure were quite soundly limited by their confinement.

Cormoran’s thoughts were focused on an altogether different timescale, that of his love for her, as he whispered in reply, “Never in a million years.”

Both quickly schooled their expressions into neutral professionalism as they heard footsteps and familiar voices travelling up the stairs toward the office. 

Wardle clocked Robin’s lipstick, spread across Cormoran’s jaw, instantly. “Nice lipstick, Gooner!” he cajoled the older man. “You may have missed a spot… somewhere… but if so, I don’t see it.”

Robin couldn’t help but laugh, even as she hid her mortified blush in her partner’s shoulder.

“You owe me ten quid, Loch.” 

Vanessa rolled her eyes in response as she approached Robin and Cormoran and their buddy the tree, already working out in her analytical mind how best to free them. 

“He was convinced we’d find the two of you in some sort of debauched state. I said no way, Wardle, Robin would _never_ want to risk her _best friend_ in the _entire world_ walking in on her in a compromising position. Thought it was a safe bet,” Vanessa teased.

“Me, I thought it would be handcuffs,” Wardle contributed.

“Would you _please_ make yourself useful?!” Robin and Cormoran and Vanessa asked in unison, give or take a few colourful interjections.

Maybe decorating the office for Christmas wasn’t the best idea after all, Cormoran thought, but then he could hardly find it in him to regret any of the night’s festivities. Perhaps Robin still had the better gift-giving record between the two of them, but then, she was extraordinary.


End file.
